Weekend at Barton's
by usa123
Summary: Clint finds out Steve has maxed out his PTO and convinces him to spend the long weekend at his family's house in Iowa. Unfortunately, the relaxing vacation does not go as planned. Written before AOU so there is a Barton farm but no Barton family. Hurt!Clint, hurt!Steve. No slash/no ships.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: As stated in the summary, I started this fic before _Age of Ultron_ premiered, so while it features a Barton farm, there is no Barton family. It is set somewhere between the _Avengers_ and _The Winter Soldier_, with the exact date and time of your choosing. I personally have it ballparked at mid-2013, but it can ****really ****fit anywhere in that range. Finally, visually, I am using the Barton farm from _Age of Ultron _as the setting for this story, and not the one from _Endgame. _Hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing, so don't sue.**

* * *

Steve drove his shoulder into the door of Clint's farmhouse with enough strength to send it flying off its hinges. "Hang on, Clint," he mumbled as he carried his teammate into the living room.

Having not yet regained conscious, Clint didn't so much as grunt as Steve stumbled into the dining room and laid him on the long wooden table.

"Barton!" Steve tapped his teammate's ghost-white cheek but received no response. He swore under his breath then hobbled into the bathroom where he grabbed all the towels in sight. He hurried back to the dining area where he pressed the wad into Barton's bleeding side.

"Gonna be fine..." Steve's mouth was making the words without his brain's conscious effort. "Jus' stick with me."

Steve tucked his useless right hand against his ribs, then pressed his left forearm against the towels and leaned forward, applying all his weight to the compress. He was rewarded with a soft groan.

"Tha's it," Steve continued as the towels began to turn a pinkish color. "You're doing great."

He stayed like this for another moment before realizing the compress wasn't truly helping; even though he was applying pressure, Barton was still bleeding out at an alarmingly fast rate. The second fact Steve realized was that, in his current condition, he wasn't going to be able to give Clint the help he needed.

Steve had phoned JARVIS on the trip back to the cabin, but in order to hold onto Clint with both arms, he had had to press the StarkPhone between his shoulder and his ear. It had worked fine for a moment, but then Steve's vision had blurred and he'd tripped on a rock, sending the phone and Clint flying. Obviously he'd chosen to save his teammate, leaving the phone to smash into a rock and break into at least four separate pieces. Steve wasn't sure if the call had gone through, but he had to hope that JARVIS was already alerting Tony—maybe even Coulson—and that a rescue was on its way.

If not though, there was only one other option.

"Be righ' 'ack." Steve grabbed the longest towel he could find and used it to tie the others in place. He hated leaving Clint but he had to get them into town, where help was. Walking was too slow and painful, so he needed keys.

Where had Clint left the keys?

Steve's vision was shifting like a Tilt-A-Whirl gone wrong but he managed to stumble into the main room and find two identical sets of keys hanging to the left of two identical doors. When Steve held onto the floor lamp and closed one eye, the two images finally merged into one.

He grabbed the key ring then stumbled back to Clint.

"Stay wi' me," he mumbled as he picked Clint up again and headed for what remained of the front door.

* * *

_Thirty-six hours earlier…_

"C'mon man," Clint Barton pleaded as he flopped down, chest first, on Steve's once-pristinely-made bed. "It'll be fun."

Though he heard the comforter crinkling, Steve didn't look up from the thick file he was reviewing. Clint had been harassing him all week about going on a vacation, and while a break from aliens and SHIELD and the future sounded pretty good to him right now, he was literally buried in other assignments. Every free surface in his room was covered in a stack of files someone at SHIELD has asked him to look into, thinking he was the authority on all things HYDRA. All of them had the same deadline: yesterday.

More than one person had told him to leave the files at work, so he could develop some work/life balance, but Steve never managed to get to them in the midst of all the missions and events and meetings that occurred during work hours. So he started flipping through them in his free time just to make a dent in the stack. His plan for this weekend had been to get through most of them, so he could at least try to regain some of his personal space again.

"I can't, Clint. There's too much to do here." As proof, Steve tilted up one corner of the stack of files in front of him.

"Anyone ever tell you you work too much?" Clint countered, swinging his arm around the room to highlight the stacks and stacks of folders. "Because you obviously do. Plus, I know you've maxed out your PTO."

Steve looked over the top of his current file at the archer. "Do you now?"

"_Everyone_ knows that," Clint replied, scrunching up his face for good measure. "Plus, you've never missed an Avengers' meeting, which are never during normal business hours."

"Maybe all my vacations are around here."

Clint wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Then you aren't really living."

Steve frowned at him, but the archer just laid silently in Steve's bed, waiting him out.

"I have more PTO than I'd ever need," Steve said after a long moment.

"That's not the point." Clint shifted so his feet dangled off the long side of the bed then rested his chin in his hands. "You've met Jill from HR, right?"

Steve nodded. The dark-haired woman was the unofficial mother hen of the SHIELD agents. When he had first joined up, she had taken it upon herself to make sure he was welcome. It wasn't just a show for him though; not long after, Steve'd discovered that she acted that way toward all the new hires. She took the time to know each agent and their families, so she could do her best to get each agent the days off they needed for school plays or concerts or recitals, if applicable. "I'm not sure—"

"Do you remember when she found out that Coulson was still alive?"

Steve nodded again. Coulson had walked out of Jill's office looking thoroughly reprimanded. There was no mystery to what she had said, though; even the other end of the floor had been able to hear her yelling about how stupid it was for him to take on a demigod by himself, fall for Loki's ploy and to die (even if it was just for eight seconds), and not tell anyone when he returned from Tahiti.

"Now, when she finds out agents aren't taking care of themselves—especially blond-haired, blue-eyed agents such as yourself—she doesn't yell. In fact, she doesn't say a word. And trust me, the silence is worse than the yelling." Clint grinned conspiratorially. "So, you can either get out of town with me for the weekend, or face Jill's wrath. Your pick."

Steve lowered his file, scanned the high stacks of paperwork surrounding him, and sighed. "Just for the weekend, right?"

Clint sprang up from bed and clapped Steve on the shoulder, wincing only slightly as his hand contacted rock-like muscle. "That's the spirit. We leave tomorrow morning 0400. Pack your fishing pole."

"But I don't have—" Steve began but it was too late. Clint was long out the door.

* * *

In all the time Steve had known Clint, he only remembered three times when the archer had only shown up to something on time. Sure, his tardiness always had a good reason—the train was late, the street light was out, the corner bank was getting robbed—but the outcome was always the same. It was to the point where the Avengers started taking bets about what time Clint would show up to their meetings. Steve had won a majority of those bets, which had led Tony to accuse him of being in cahoots with Clint in order to pick that night's dinner. Really, Steve had come to have a fairly good idea of when his teammates would show up to places, depending on the weather, what had happened in the area the night before, and if food was present.

Today though, Steve stepped into the garage at 3:55 AM to find Clint already sitting in the driver's seat of a beat-up old Ford that Steve was honestly surprised Tony let park next to the Tesla, the Shelby, and a bunch of other cars whose parts were worth more than the entirety of Clint's truck. The archer was playing the steering wheel like a set of drums, and his head was banging to a bass-heavy rhythm.

Steve tapped on the window as he passed, not wanting to frighten Clint, who he suspected couldn't hear him over the music. Clint simply nodded a hello, turned down the music, and rolled down his window.

"I thought you were Mr. Punctuality," he shouted, which Steve suspected to be somewhat unintentional.

"It's only 3:55," Steve retorted as he chucked his bag in the back and slid into the passenger's seat.

"Yeah, but on vacation, ten minutes is on time and on time is late," Clint cheerfully informed him, before turning back to face front. "Now, since I don't know if you've ever been on a proper road trip, we need to lay down some ground rules. One, this truck only stops for gas and food. Bathroom breaks are to be handled in there too. It's a long trip as is and we don't want to waste any time."

He waited for Steve to nod before continuing, "Two, it's my job to get us there safely. Your job, since you don't know where you're going, is to distribute snacks." Clint motioned to the backseat where a slew of overflowing grocery bags were piled up.

"You have enough for a small army."

"Or for one supersoldier and an extremely junk-food-starved archer."

Steve conceded Clint's point with a nod. "Any more rules?"

"An addendum. Driver usually picks the music, but since you seem new to this whole road tripping thing, I vacate my title."

A small object was launched into the air, which Steve easily caught.

"You know how to work an iPod?"

"Contrary to popular belief, I actually like new tech." Steve quickly powered up the iPod then set about looking around for an aux cord.

Realizing what Steve was after, Clint grabbed what looked like a blank cassette tape from the cup holder and held the metal end of a cord out to Steve. "Truck's too old for an aux. Gotta make do with the tape player instead. Sounds a little different but works well enough."

While Steve grabbed the cord and plugged it into the iPod, Clint popped the tape into the deck and changed input streams. "I love everything on there," he said, motioning back toward the iPod, "so go nuts. Just shy away from the slow stuff until the sun comes up."

"Copy that." Steve scanned the long list of Clint's songs and played the first one he recognized.

Clint nodded approvingly and cranked up the volume before he threw the car into reverse and peeled out of the garage.

"Iowa," he shouted as the garage attendants hurried to raise the boom, "here we come!"

* * *

Unfortunately, Clint's farm was a 17-hour drive from the Tower, which in his own words, was "too far to drive for a weekend." He'd tried to sign out a quinjet but Fury had firmly kiboshed that idea. Clint had then found an acquaintance in Rock Hill, Pennsylvania, who owned a private jet and was willing to let Clint and Steve borrow it for the weekend. That gave them four hours of the stereotypical road trip before they switched to the jet, which Clint piloted smoothly all the way to Waverly Falls, IA.

"There it is," Clint said, tapping Steve's elbow with his. With his other hand, he pointed off to his right at a two-story, off-white house with a light green roof. A porch, draped in mosquito netting, wrapped around the entire front of the house and the wooden swing that hung next to the door drifted back and forth in the light breeze. Off to right of the house was what must have once been a field, but was now long overgrown. Just past that was an old barn, its front two doors secured with a shiny new combination lock.

"You own a farm?" Steve asked, incredulous, as they touched down in the spacious front yard**.**

"Technically, no. I don't raise any crops. This place is just my escape."

Steve looked over at the knee-high weeds that framed the dirt path running up to the front door. "It doesn't seem like you take your PTO very often either."

Clint absently pawed at his ears. "How else did you think I knew how upset Jill was going to be?"

Then, he crawled in the back of the jet and handed out the two duffel bags, which Steve gently dropped outside the jet. By that time, Clint had freed the plane cover and chalks, which between the two of them, only took a few minutes to put in place.

"Let's drop your stuff off and head for the lake. We still have time to throw a line in before it gets too hot," Clint said as he picked up his bag and headed toward the house.

"I didn't bring a fishing pole," Steve admitted. He slung his bag over his shoulder and quickly caught up to Clint. "Never owned one and had no idea which one to buy."

"I realized that when you threw your stuff into the back." Clint tapped his temple with his index and middle fingers. "Super spy and all."

Steve responded with a rather rude gesture but didn't think anything of it until a few steps later when he realized Clint was no longer walking beside him. He turned around to find the archer frozen in place, his bag on the ground, and one hand clutching dramatically at his heart.

"Are you okay?" Steve demanded, dropping his own duffel to the ground and racing back to his teammate.

"Captain America just flipped me off," Clint sputtered. "This calls everything I know about the world into question."

It was at this point that Steve realized Clint was messing with him. He shoved the archer slightly harder than he should have, then picked up Clint's dropped gear and headed back for his own. "You forget there was a time before all this when I was just Steve Rogers," he called over his shoulder.

"No, actually I didn't." In just a few steps, Clint caught up with Steve and stole back his luggage. "So, have you actually ever _been_ fishing?"

"Properly, no. But Bucky and I used to go down by the docks when we found enough string."

"Catch anything?"

"Not usually. But that wasn't why we went." Memories of his childhood flooded back, unwanted, and Steve had to stop speaking to keep himself from physically reacting to them. What Bucky would have thought of this future, even though he had yet to see a flying car... "It was nice to get away for a while," Steve finished softly, once the memories had been shoved back in their box.

By this time, they had climbed the four rickety stairs to the porch. Steve, who was still in the lead, stopped at the mosquito net surrounding the porch, thinking it had to be opened somehow, but Clint blazed straight through; the netting simply popped open and snapped closed again behind him.

"Best As-Seen-On-TV purchase I ever made," Clint said as he dropped his bag on a side table and began flipping through a large key ring.

Steve turned sideways to accommodate his bag and easily stepped through the seam in the netting. While Clint began trying random keys for the door, Steve took better look around. On the porch itself, there was a stack of dusty outdoor chairs, the table Clint's bag was currently on, and a circular grill tucked in the far corner, buried under a pile of boxes whose purpose Steve could only guess. Outside the porch to the left, just visible above the knee-high grass, was a fire pit circled by strategically placed stumps. A well-worn but now overgrown trail led from the porch to the fire pit and around the house to the barn. Said trail branched at the barn and continued to the north, most likely to the lake Steve had seen on the way in.

"Aha!" Clint muttered as the fifth key he tried slid successfully into the lock. With one hand on the knob, he turned around to face Steve then dramatically flung the door open. "Mi casa es su casa," he crooned as the alarm started blaring.

Clint hurried toward the flashing panel a few feet inside the door while Steve stepped into the large living room and slowly surveyed the space. There was a staircase directly in front of him, dividing the large front room into two. Off to the right there was a living room, with the kitchen and dining area branching off behind it, and to the left was a space that was uncharacteristically empty. All the furniture in main area was draped with white sheets, though Steve could make out two couches around a coffee table and either a china hutch or a bookcase in back. The air was a little stale, but nothing opening the windows couldn't fix.

"It's a nice place," he commented, carefully lowering the bags in the entryway.

"It actually belonged to my mom's side of the family," Clint said as he pulled away the curtains in the furniture-less room, letting a beam of light into the front space. "Every few years I put it on the market and buy it again as one of my other identities." He then headed into the kitchen to open that window and stuck a wooden block in the track to keep it from slamming closed. "I just can't seem to get rid of it."

Steve pulled back the shades in the living room, revealing a medium-sized portrait of a family of three hanging on the side of the staircase. He walked over to it and looked at the proud parents, standing behind their daughter who couldn't have been more than ten. She was sitting in a high-backed chair, dressed to the nines, with a brown German Shepard laying at her feet. Their clothing was relatively modern so the portrait couldn't have been from that long ago.

"That was my mother, Edith," Clint said, startling Steve who hadn't realized he had walked back in the room. Clint's hand snaked over Steve's shoulder and pointed at the young girl. "I never got to meet my grandparents."

"I'm sorry," Steve said honestly. His mother's parents had stayed in Ireland, so he'd only met his father's parents. They'd died when Steve was young, but he had one small, happy memory of going over to their house for the holidays when he was little.

Clint shrugged. "What are you going to do? The James' didn't have the best genes. I'm actually surprised they lasted long enough to reproduce… which is probably more than you wanted to know about my messed up relatives, especially so early in our trip." He then spun around and strode toward the entryway closet. "I figured you weren't going to have one, but was ready to be surprised as hell if you did."

It took Steve a moment to realize that Clint had switched subjects back to fishing. There was much clattering and rustling but Clint finally emerged from the closet with two dusty fishing rods and a tackle box. "You can use this one," he said, holding out the red rod. "It's actually the one I taught Natasha on."

"So you _do _take some PTO," Steve said, as he gratefully accepted the fishing rod.

Clint scowled. "Only when they make me."

They spent a few more minutes cracking open the second-floor windows and plugging various electronics in, before Clint reset the alarm. "C'mon Rogers," he said as he sprinted out the door. "The fish are waiting."


	2. Chapter 2

**This chapter was sketched out back when I was watching _Once Upon A Time_, so you might see some resemblance between this town and Storybrooke. Similarities should end at a woman who insists on being called Gran by those she has chosen to mother who runs a kick-ass diner in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and a sheriff named Graham. Dark Lords and Evil Queens won't play any part in this story.**

**Thanks for all your kind comments on the first chapter! Hope you enjoy the update as well!**

* * *

The lake was over a mile away from Clint's farm house. Technically, it was close enough for them to walk, but Clint, who didn't want to waste a second of the weekend, insisted they'd drive. After pulling the cloth off the beat-up truck in the barn, reattaching the battery, and pouring a can of gas into the tank, they took off down a dirt path toward the water.

Once there, Clint had headed upstream to introduce Steve to his neighbor and fellow fishing aficionado, Bill. Bill was a quiet man who, while pleasant during the introductions, was very clearly sending out signals to be left alone. Clint hadn't pushed and had led Steve back to their spot after only a minute or so. He then showed Steve how to attach a lure and cast out before the two of them settled back and waited for a bite.

When Steve had first met Clint after the Battle of New York, the archer had been very quiet, almost soft-spoken. It had taken three horrendous missions and two movie nights before he finally warmed up to Steve. Since then, he could be quite the chatterbox, but only about mindless or forward-looking things. Straying into Clint's past was a lesson Steve had learned the hard way a few months back. To his credit, Clint had recovered nicely by very pointedly changing the subject, and having taken the hint, Steve hadn't strayed back to that topic of conversation since. This was a large part of why Steve had been surprised Clint had been so open about the portrait of his mother's side of the family… which now had him thinking that the point of contention wasn't his past in general, but maybe just his father.

He needn't have worried about the subject coming up again, however. Clint had no issue leading the conversation toward pleasant things like vacations, the latest office gossip, and a bunch of TV shows he thought Steve would like.

After a few hours of the sun beating down on them and no bites, they decided to call it a day. "We can try again tomorrow morning, if you want," Clint offered as he started packing up the equipment.

"Absolutely. The fish were just warning up to me." As Steve stood and stretched his arms over his head, his stomach picked that moment to growl loudly.

"I was just going to ask if you were hungry," Clint said with a laugh. "I brought a few snacks, but there's nothing substantial in the house. After we drop off the gear off, we'll drive back into town and I'll introduce you to Granny's Diner—best apple pie this side of the Mississippi. Plus, she'd kill me if I didn't stop by." He looked over at Steve, almost like he was asking Steve's approval of his plan… as if Steve would turn down what sounded like amazing diner food. Clint picked some real hole-in-the-walls back in New York, but he'd never led Steve to a bad restaurant. The supersoldier was confident Granny's Diner would be no different.

When Steve nodded, Clint smiled in obvious relief. "We'll hit up at the store on the way back and pick up some steaks and beer for tonight. Cook 'em outside under the stars, cowboy-style. Sound good?"

Steve again nodded. He was branching out in the new century and trying (and enjoying) the gambit of ethnic food, but there was something about steaks that were properly cooked, seasoned, and didn't taste like shoe leather that still had a special place in his heart. Plus, even though they both knew he couldn't get drunk, not long after the Battle of New York, Clint and Tony had taken the time to help him pick a beer he actually liked, so he could enjoy drinking with his teammates, even if he couldn't benefit from the "awesome" side effects.

"That sounds great," he said, honestly. He waited until they were back at the truck to add, "Thanks for having me out here, Clint. I thought I was going to hate not being able to work, but I'm really having a good time."

"Glad to hear it," Clint replied as he shifted the truck into drive, "but the best is still to come!" As they pulled out onto the dirt road that led back to the farmhouse, Clint gestured at the glove box. "There's jerky in there—should tide you over until we get to town."

Steve quickly inhaled the jerky before pulling another energy bar from his pocket. "I'd say you're going to spoil your dinner but I know better," was all Clint said. "Her portions are large though, even for you."

His interest piqued, Steve put his half-eaten bar back in his pocket. "You better drive faster then," he said as his stomach rumbled again.

Clint just grinned and stepped on the gas.

* * *

It had been mostly dark when they'd flown over Waverly Falls this morning so Steve really hadn't had a chance to see any buildings or people. The town was obviously older, judging by its architecture, and was trying desperately to hold onto its small town feel, despite the cell tower looming in the distance and the "We have WiFi!" signs on almost every establishment.

"Did you ever spend any time here as a kid?" Steve asked as they parked outside a crowded restaurant that had "Granny's Diner" emblazoned on a neon sign sticking out of the roof.

"Only a month with my mom."

There was clearly more to that story, but still unsure of whether his mother was a safe topic, Steve didn't press.

"It was one of the best vacations of my life," Clint added a beat later.

"It _is_ a nice break from the concrete and the skyscrapers," Steve said, after deciding that was a neutral enough response.

"And the noise."

Neither of them spoke as they spent a few beats listening to the relative silence that was only broken by the rustling leaves and indistinct conversations wafting from the diner.

"Hear that?" Steve quipped. "No explosions."

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of motion and shifted so he could see around Clint's head. An elderly woman wearing a stained white apron was storming across the street, looking rather irate. There were no pedestrians on this side of the street and Steve and Clint were the only ones still in their car, which meant the woman was heading for them. "Incoming," Steve said, pointing at the driver's side window.

Clint looked over his shoulder and broke into a grin, which surprised Steve not once, but twice, when it dropped off his face a moment later.

"Clinton Francis Barton!" the woman shouted, loud enough to be heard through the glass. "You get yourself out here and say hello."

"Francis?" Steve asked with a grin of his own. Clint's middle name was a huge secret around SHIELD—there was even a very expensive pool going about what it really was. Natasha had abstained, which led everyone to believe she knew it, but they'd had about as much luck prying it from her as they had from Clint himself.

"Tell anyone and I will do something drastic to your shield," Clint vowed before he threw open the door and hopped out of the car. To Steve's surprise, he didn't go up to the irate woman and stayed by the car while she marched up to him.

"Hi Gran," he said, rubbing his hand up and down the back of his neck.

"Clinton Barton, it has been far too long," the woman responded. Then, she rested her hands on her hips and began looking Clint over from head to toe.

"You know I don't like it when you use my full name, Gran," Clint grumbled but he allowed his appearance to be examined. "It's embarrassing."

"Francis is a lovely name, Clinton. You should be proud of it."

From Clint's reaction, Steve sensed that wasn't entirely the name he was contending, but he was having too much fun watching this show to interject on Clint's behalf.

Then the woman, Gran apparently, straightened up and pushed her glasses higher onto her nose. "You're getting skinny. Are they not feeding you enough in D.C.?"

Clint's jaw jutted out defensively. "I'm eating just fine—"

Gran waved her hand to silence the rest of his reply. "It's nothing I can't fix." She stared at him for another moment then the sharp set to her shoulders softened and she held out her arms. "Welcome back, boy."

Clint immediately stepped into her embrace. "It's been too long," he mumbled with his face squished happily into her shoulder.

They stood like that for a long while and Steve made himself look away so as to not intrude on their private moment. He couldn't help but peek back toward them when he heard what sounded like someone pulling away.

It had been Gran, but instead of returning to her original position about three feet away from Clint, she remained close enough to run her hand down the side of Clint's face and pinch his cheek between her thumb and index finger. Clint rolled his eyes with great exaggeration but didn't twist free.

"And who is your strapping friend, who's trying his best not to eavesdrop?" Gran then said, motioning toward the car where Steve was still sitting.

"Margie Wilkinson, this is Steve Rogers," Clint said while waving for Steve to get out of the car. "Steve, this is—"

Margie was waiting for Steve in front of the hood ornament. "If you don't call me Gran, you're not allowed to eat here," she informed Steve, before standing on her toes and pulling him into a hug. "Any friend of Clinton's is a friend of ours," she whispered into his ear.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said, around Clint's, "I _heard _that."

The woman released Steve and fixed him with an unamused look.

"Thank you, Gran?" he amended.

"Much better," she said, then emphasized her point by reaching up and gently patting his cheek. "Now follow me, you two. I have a lasagna fresh out of the oven that I think you'll really enjoy."

She led them into the diner, bypassing the line of waiting guests. They all groaned and were just starting to complain when Gran silenced them with a look.

"Excuse me," she said to two of her patrons as she grabbed a free bar stool from behind the counter and jammed it next to the only other free chair in the entire restaurant. The patrons next to the new seat grumbled slightly, until they saw who had done the rearranging. As their protests died in their throats, Gran promised them both complimentary slices of apple pie before she patted the bar top between the two seats and motioned for Steve and Clint to sit.

"Saw a jet fly over this morning," she explained as she laid down two menus that had appeared from seemingly nowhere. "Hoped it was you, and that you'd remember to stop in."

"Gran, you know I wouldn't leave without visiting you," Clint said as he took a seat and propped open the menu.

"Glad to see some things haven't changed. Your hair though—"

Thankfully, Clint was saved by a sharp, "Order up!" from the kitchen.

"I'll be back shortly," Gran said, after acknowledging her chef. She began to walk toward the kitchen, only slowing down to whisper, "Like I said before, I recommend the lasagna… Captain."

Steve kept his expression neutral until Gran had disappeared into the kitchen. While he didn't mind her knowing who he really was—if Clint trusted her, he did as well. Clint had done nothing to make him second-guess that trust—he wasn't so sure about the other patrons in her diner. While Steve wasn't exactly trying to hide his identity—after all, there were only so many blond-haired, blue-eyed soldiers who could do what he did—it wasn't something he was outwardly broadcasting. It was a nice change to be able to go places anonymously, and something he hadn't had during his last few years of the '40s.

However, Gran had said it softly enough that the man to Steve's right probably hadn't heard. Even if he had, his first thought probably wasn't going to be associate Steve with Captain America. It was more likely he'd think a Captain in the military, and then never give it a second thought. Besides, even if word got out, who would believe Captain America was eating lunch at a diner in Waverly Falls, Iowa?

"She's right," Clint said, drawing Steve's attention back to the diner. "The lasagna is amazing."

Steve hadn't made it past the first page of the menu, but he immediately dropped it to the counter, ready to take Clint's word for it.

* * *

Once again, Clint had hit the lunch choice out of the park. Two huge pieces of lasagna and an enormous slice of apple pie later and Steve was fairly sure they were going to have to roll him out of the restaurant. The same could be said for Clint, who had been coerced into having a second, slightly smaller slice of pie, and was now looking a little green around the edges.

When they had asked for the check, Gran had snorted loudly and waved her hands in a shoo-ing motion. "For all the two of you do for us, this one's on me."

"If he doesn't treat you right out at his place, there's always rooms available here," she added with a wink in Steve's direction before dancing off to help her next customer.

"That's the best lunch I've had in a while," Steve said as they walked out of the restaurant. "If only she could come cook for SHIELD…"

"You're not the first to suggest it," Clint replied while unlocking his truck. He opened the driver's door as far as it would go then carefully heaved himself into the cab. "Fury was out here once."

Steve, who had climbed in on the other side of the truck, looked over in surprise. He knew Clint's relationship with Fury was more than just agent-superior but it didn't seem like Clint's farm saw much traffic, which spoke to how close he and the Director must really be.

"A mission went bad," Clint explained with a shrug. "I took some unannounced time. It's a long story. Anyway, he ate there and offered her a job on the spot."

"She obviously turned it down."

"Not exactly. She just didn't want to leave at that point in her life. Her daughter is here and her grandkids. The offer has been deferred until they grow up a little."

"Well then I look forward to the day when I don't have to hold my nose to choke down the sludge that passes as clam chowder."

Clint grinned as he started the truck. "You and me both."

* * *

That night Steve grilled steaks on the outdoor grill, putting to use every tip anyone had shot his way over the past few years. After the steaks had had a chance to rest, Steve and Clint feasted on them and the oven-baked fingerling potatoes Clint had made, outside the porch, safely behind the mosquito netting. With the sun on longer in the sky, the temperature was dropping quickly, and had sent Steve back into the house for his jacket in the middle of making s'mores.

"A travesty!" Clint had said in the store, upon hearing Steve had never had one. Obviously determining to rectify this injustice, he'd grabbed two boxes of graham crackers, three bags of marshmallows, and at least six bricks of chocolate, and paid no attention to Steve who insisted that that was far too much for the two of them to eat in a weekend.

As Steve stepped back onto the porch, this time much warmer, he heard animals baying in the distance.

"Wolves," Clint said to Steve's unasked question. He stoked the fire under the grill while tossing Steve another bag of marshmallows with his free hand.

Steve easily popped the bag open and set about lining up marshmallows on his skewer. "You have much of a problem with them?"

"Every now and then. According to the town Facebook page, there's been an uptick of activity in the area, which was why Gran's was so empty today."

"Empty?" Steve repeated, having seen the line crawling out the door.

"She usually does twice that business, even at the time we went. People are staying home or have left until the ranger does his job." Clint shrugged. "All comes with living this far out of civilization."

He stole the bag of marshmallows back and began toasting another few for himself. "It's not all bad though. I just wish it was closer to NY, yanno? Easier to get back out here."

"Obviously, we need our own quinjet." Steve craned his neck to catch some chocolate dripping off the back of his newly-assembled s'more, and when he straightened up, he saw Clint staring wide-eyed at him. "What?"

"That's a great idea. Remind me to talk to Fury and Tony about it when we get back."

Steve had said it in jest, but after seeing how seriously Clint was taking his idea, he began considering the positive implications of it. Less dependence on SHIELD meant more freedom and faster response times for the team. "We'll have to pitch it in a way that doesn't focus on aiding your weekend getaways," he said slowly.

"Duh, but it can be an added perk!"

Steve just grinned and went back to eating his s'more.

When they were both yawning consistently, they called it a night and rose early the next morning to try their hand at fishing again. After depositing their stuff on the lake, they went upstream to say hi to Bill, who was in the same spot he had been yesterday, and might have been wearing exactly the same outfit. Clint offered him a coffee and asked how the fish were biting, before he and Steve headed back to their claimed spot in the shade.

About an hour later, Steve heard an animal howling. If he wasn't mistaken, they were a lot closer than they had been yesterday. "Sounds like the wolves from last night," he commented as he jiggled his line.

"Yeah." Clint quickly scanned the area around them, causing Steve to do the same. There were no animals in sight, not even visible fish in the lake. "It's odd that they're out so early," he said as he turned back to his fishing pole.

"Could it be the swings in weather confusing them?" Steve'd heard something of the sort on the animal documentaries that played in all public areas of Stark Tower, but had no idea if that was actually accurate. His only real experiences with the great outdoors were from 1944 Germany, when nature had been little more than an obstacle to his mission.

"Maybe?" The baying ceased and Clint slowly began to relax. "Lucky I don't have any livestock, I guess."

They'd been fishing only another few minutes before a loud snarl ripped through the air, followed a split second later by a shrill scream. Steve and Clint immediately dropped their poles and took off in the direction of the cry. Steve poured on the speed when he heard a second scream of agony which dissolved into other unfortunate and nightmare-inducing sounds.

He rounded the bend to find a silver wolf standing over Bill's body. Bill was totally still beneath it and when the wolf turned, Steve saw blood dripping from its lips.

"Hey!" Clint shouted from behind him. When he saw the red-muzzled wolf, he pulled a gun from the small of his back and fired it into the air. "You get away from him."

The wolf growled loudly and sprang towards them, apparently unafraid of the gun. Steve quickly looked around and found a decently-sized stick, which he threw with a just fraction of his strength under the wolf's feet, hoping to distract it. The beast leaped over the stick, but there was something about the motion that caught Steve's attention. The jump had been jerky and unsteady… almost_ mechanical_, if he had to put a word to it.

He didn't have time for that now though, since the beast was quickly closing the distance between them. While Steve sought out another weapon, Clint was howling loudly, in hope of driving the wolf away, while readying his handgun for another shot, just in case.

Steve had only a split second to see flashes of metallic red in the wolf's eyes, thus confirming this was no ordinary animal—and maybe not even an animal at all—before he and Clint found themselves under attack.

* * *

Unlike the previous day, Granny's Diner was now totally empty. It was all thanks to Sheriff Graham, who had stopped in during breakfast to warn Margie's patrons about the increasing frequency of wolf attacks in the surrounding area. Sadly, the attacks were nothing new and had been discussed in whispers for the past week, but now Graham had apparently decided they were serious enough to merit his intervention.

Since Graham very rarely did such things, everyone in their right mind had finished their meals then sought the safety of their houses. Margie hadn't had a lick of business in over three hours, so in order to save money, she decided to close up early and sent Fredrick, the chef, home.

She was working in the back, counting sugar packets for the table displays, when heard the bell on the front door jingle.

"I'm sorry," she said, poking her head into the cased opening, "but we're—Good heavens!"

A battered Steve Rogers was standing in the doorway, holding an unconscious Clint Barton in his arms. Blood coated the left side of Steve's neck and he was obviously keeping weight off his right ankle. Clint had what looked like a belt wrapped around his middle, keeping a thick stack of towels in place. Said towels were quickly turning an unfortunate shade of red.

Steve took a shaky step and barely kept from pitching forward. "Can you—"

Margie quickly shoved two tables together and swept off the table settings. "Put him down here."

* * *

**In case it's not obvious, the wolf Steve and Clint fight is fully animatronic. There will be no animal cruelty in this, or any of my fics. The question now is, how did a piece of machinery like this end up in Waverly Falls?**

**Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Time for some more of the team to get involved...**

* * *

Back at the Tower, Tony was working on the inside of his newest Mark, trying to connect the addition to the chest RT. Unfortunately, the connection point had not been well designed as it was up and away from the major openings of the suit. He'd tried to access it with every known contortion of his body, but nothing except hanging upside down from the ceiling of the lab, had actually allowed him the angles he needed to attach the upgrade.

He was just reaching in to attach it when he heard a harsh beeping over the blaring AC/DC. His concentration lapsed and his hand slipped, slicing against the sharp edge of the plate beneath him. Swearing colorfully, Tony pulled his hand out of the suit before he could contaminate any other pieces.

"JARVIS, what is hell is that?" he snapped as he flipped himself upright and pressed the tail of his shirt to the side of his hand to stem the bleeding.

"The Avengers' Emergency beacon, sir."

Given that he had designed the beacons to not be triggered accidentally, Tony immediately sobered. "Get me down."

He was halfway out of the harness before his feet made contact with the lab floor and quickly shed the rest on his way to his workstation. He pushed the side of his hand into a relatively clean towel that was bundled beside his keyboard then looked at the holographic map JARVIS was bringing up.

"Iowa?" he queried as JARVIS zoomed in on the ping. "We don't know anyone in Iowa."

"Captain Rogers and Agent Barton are there, sir. At Agent Barton's vacation home." A separate dot, which must have been the vacation home, appeared on-screen not far away from the original flashing red ping.

DUM-E beeped from Tony's side and held up a pack of ice, which Tony pressed to the outside of the shop towel, before patting his bot on the head.

"Try calling—"

"I already have, sir. Captain Rogers' phone does not take the call and while Agent Barton's rings, there is no answer."

"Trace—"

"Agent Barton's phone is in his vacation home and has not moved for the past four hours. Captain Rogers' matches the location of the emergency beacon but has not checked in since."

"How long ago was that?"

"Nearly fifteen minutes, sir."

He really needed to work on lowering that latency. But that was a problem he could work on when his teammates were safe again.

"Set course for Iowa, J. See if anyone is available for backup." If the situation was bad enough for Steve to trigger the beacon, Tony could use all the help he could get.

Last he'd heard, Natasha was on a mission, Thor was in Asgard, and Bruce was somewhere off the grid. At least they got an electronic postcard from Bruce every weekend—they hadn't heard from Thor in two months. Hell, at this point, Tony'd even accept backup from Agent Hill, if Fury would lend her out. She not-so-secretly intimidated the hell out of him, mostly because he was 100% sure she could kill him with a paperclip and vaporize his corpse off the face of the earth without breaking a sweat. In this case though, that would be perfect for whatever they were up against.

"Agent Romanoff returned from a mission last night, sir. Thor and Dr. Banner are out of my reach."

"That'll do." With a few taps on his phone, Tony remotely fired up the Iron Man suit in the corner. "Get Natasha down here."

"She is actually in her suite downstairs."

Tony blinked. Usually Natasha headed to her apartment after a mission for a few days, then rejoined the team. It was odd for her to have come straight here. Which meant the mission must have gone terribly.

Unfortunately, he was without other viable options.

"I'll go down and talk to her. You get the quinjet ready."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

Glass shattered in the distance as the table settings crashed to the ground but Margie was focused on her longtime friend. Clint's face was an awful shade of gray and he was completely unresponsive in Steve's arms.

"I'll get more towels," she said to Steve before taking off for the back. The ones surrounding Clint's abdomen were almost completely soaked through and wouldn't be doing much good for much longer.

In the back, while she grabbed as many clean towels off the shelves as she could hold, she called Chet Martin, the town doctor, and swore creatively when she heard his voicemail message.

"It's Margie. I need you at the diner," she said as soon as she heard the beep. In hindsight, she was probably speaking too fast for him to understand, but it was all the time she could spare right now. "Clint Barton's hurt, bleeding around his waist. I don't know much more than that." The phone was tucked between her shoulder and error, so she dropped the towels in order to pull it free and dial 911. She explained as much of the situation as possible to the operator, was informed an ambulance was on the way but over an hour out, and was given their direct line if Clint's status changed. Then she jabbed the red 'end' button, dropped it down her front into a the pocket of her apron, and picked up the towels again.

"What happened to him?" she asked Steve once she was back in the dining room. She dropped most of the towels on a nearby table before rolling up a few to stick under Clint's legs, to keep his blood focused on his abdomen. Then she circled around Steve, who was struggling to untie what she now recognized as a seat belt around Clint's waist, to elevate Clint's head.

"Wolf attack," Steve muttered in an oddly detached tone. He continued to fumble with the knot in the seat belt, using mainly his left hand. In the two seconds Margie allowed herself to think on it, she realized seen him eat right-handed yesterday in the diner. Which meant there was an injury or some sort that he was hiding.

Desperately wishing she hadn't sent Fredrick home, Margie leaned over the counter and located a pair of scissors, which she used to cut the seat belt. As it dropped away, Steve looked up at her, his gaze unsteady and his pupils uneven.

Probably a concussion, but since he wasn't actively bleeding out, his injuries were going to have to wait until Clint was stabilized.

By the time Margie had stacked the remainder of the towels, Steve had managed to focus long enough to begin clumsily peeling at the red ones packed to Clint's torso so Margie could replace them. When he pulled away the last layer, Margie saw Clint's grey shirt hanging in shreds, a pattern that was gruesomely repeated with his actual skin.

"That's no ordinary wolf," she said, sparing barely another second's glance before she was shoving towels against Clint's side and leaning forward to apply additional pressure. The wounds were too defined, not at all ragged. She'd lived here long enough to have seen a wolf attack or two from unprepared campers.

"Yeah," Steve looked up in surprise and the quick shift of his weight caused him to teeter slightly. He quickly leaned against the table, bracing himself with his left hand. "Animatronic," he ground out through clenched teeth and from his short, quick inhales and deep swallows, it was obvious that he was trying to keep from retching.

"Is he injured anywhere else?" Margie asked as she pushed farther forward. She was hoping for some reaction from Clint, but didn't receive so much as a grunt.

"Don't think… so?"

"How about you, Steve? How badly did you hit your head?" She then touched the side of Clint's neck, barely able to feel a pulse beneath her fingertips. The good news he was breathing regularly, though his inhales were little more than soft rasps.

"'m fine," Steve was quick to slur. "Need to... take 'are... of Clint."

"I'm doing my best. But I need to know how you're doing, honey. What happened to your arm?"

"L'be fine." Though he was still pale as a sheet, Steve's nausea seemed to have passed. He stayed hunched over for another moment then lifted his head and tucked his injured arm tighter to his chest. "Wha' ca' I do?"

Margie wanted nothing more than to tell him to sit down before he passed out, but if Doctor Martin wasn't around, she was going to have to do some field surgery for Clint to have any chance of surviving. "I'm going to need you to put pressure on these while I stitch them up."

Steve dropped his chin in a nod and hobbled over to her side of the table.

"I'm going to pull back on three and you take over." She looked directly at Steve. "You got it?"

"Y's."

"Good. One, two, three!" Margie waited until Steve's forearms were lined up next to hers before she pulled back. With a groan, the soldier shifted over to his right and took her place leaning heavily on Clint.

The moment she was free, Margie grabbed her first-aid kid from under the counter and popped it open. It was substantially better packed than the average drugstore one since she'd had some medical training back in the day. Upon learning that, Doctor Martin had strengthened what she already knew then left her well-supplied in case of his absence.

"How did you get here, honey?" she asked, trying to keep Steve talking to keep him from slipping into shock while she pawed for the suture kit, squeeze bottle, and disinfectant.

"Drove." He was fixated on a small hole in the wood table, visible under the clear tablecloth. "Keys're… on the table."

Margie exhaled loudly, having hoped that wasn't the answer. In his barely-there condition, he could have caused a lot of damage on the road. That being said, she knew why he'd done it and it was hypocritical for her to have assumed any less. All she could do at this point was hope the streets had been as empty as her diner.

Under Steve's arms, the towels were again turning a shade of red. Margie couldn't afford to wait any longer.

"Okay Steve," she said as she pulled on a set of latex gloves. "I need to see the first row."

Steve grit his teeth then pulled back ever so slightly with the towel. Marge soaked the gauze in disinfectant then swiped off the wound. This one was smaller than she'd thought, only about two or three inches in length. She quickly threw the gauze aside, irrigated it with the squeeze bottle, patted it dry, and closed it with steri-strips.

One down.

As she instructed Steve to move the towels back again, she spared a second to see his face tightly scrunched, as if trying to avoid passing out or throwing up. Neither was preferable, given the blood caked to the side of his face.

"Stay with me, Steve," she said.

He made a non-committal sound, which was as good as she could have hoped for at the moment, then pulled back a bit more of the towel. This slice was considerably longer and deeper than the first one, and would definitely require stitches. Margie performed the same pre-maintenance, then set to work suturing the wound closed.

* * *

Tony stood outside Natasha's door for only a second before he summoned all his courage and knocked. He then slid to the right, just in time for him to hear something sharp, most likely a large knife, embed itself in the far side of the door.

"I haven't slept in 48 hours," Natasha groaned from the far side of the door. "If—"

"Barton and Cap are in trouble."

Her oncoming threat died in the air and, four seconds later, Natasha yanked open the door. She had a large bruise on one temple and massive swelling around her lip and jaw, but otherwise seemed alright. The dark bags around her eyes spoke to her exhaustion, but her eyes themselves were somehow awake and almost challenging.

"What happened?"

By the time Tony had explained the situation, Natasha had grabbed her combat gear off the pile on the floor and was pushing Tony toward the elevator. As soon as the door slid closed, she grabbed the hem of her oversized sweater and pulled it upward. Tony, realizing what was happening, snapped around to face the door while Natasha pulled on her gear.

"No indication of what caused them to trigger the alarm?"

Tony shook his head, his line of sight laser-focused on the slight indentation of the right door.

"Is that a no?"

"Affirmative," Tony replied, once he realized she hadn't seen him. "No indications yet."

Natasha swore in Russian, then stepped next to Tony. He hazarded a glance at her shoulder, then relaxed when he saw it fully covered in black protective material.

"If this is what happens when he takes time off," Natasha said as she pulled two guns out of who knows where and slid them into her holsters, "he's never taking another vacation."

As the elevator doors opened on the roof, Tony nodded. "I can live with that."

* * *

Margie tied her last knot, trimmed the suture, then gently wiped Clint's abdomen with a pad of gauze to mop up the linger blood trails, mindful of the black rows of stitches. They weren't as neat or even as they'd been back in the day, but they seemed to be doing the job all the same.

Then she began taping large squares of gauze over the stitches to keep them clean. Clint didn't so much as flinch, even when she accidentally brushed one of the larger sliced with the back of her hand. Concerned, she grabbed his wrist and took his pulse again, noting it had steadied out slightly but was still far too weak to be considered normal. His breathing was still labored but regular, and his chest was rising and falling in a rhythm.

Given the amount of blood staining the table, her gloves, and floor around them, he was going to need a blood transfusion and IV fluids, neither of which Margie had at her diner. Chet Martin's office was mainly general practice so it was unlikely he'd have any blood on hand... unless he'd been preparing for the wolf attacks, but that was somewhat of a Hail Mary on Margie's part. Even if Martin didn't have any blood at his office, he'd definitely have fluids, glucose, and painkillers, all of which Clint desperately needed to stabilize him until the ambulance arrived.

"How's he?" Steve croaked.

Margie looked up to see the supersoldier slouched in a nearby chair, bracing his elbow against the wooden arm and pressing a once-clean clean towel against the side of his head. He had lost some more of his color and looked to be not far from passing out himself.

"I've done all I can. Hopefully Chet—Dr. Martin—calls me back or Clint stabilizes enough to be moved."

"Needs bl'd... doesn't he?"

Margie nodded but before she could speak, Steve locked his elbows and pushed himself upright. "Stay with Clint. 'll go."

Margie closed the distance between them in two large steps and pushed down on Steve's shoulder. "Like hell you will. You can hardly stand. You're not going to make it the mile to the Doc's office." Not to mention there probably wasn't any blood there for Steve to retrieve and she wasn't sure he was with it enough to grab everything else Clint needed.

She reached over the counter and pulled up a corded phone, then scribbled on the pad. "_You_ will stay and watch over Clint. _I'll_ drive down to the office, grab some supplies, and be back as soon as I can. I wrote down my number if you need me."

Steve swallowed hard then nodded.

On the off-chance she'd actually find some emergency blood, she asked, "What type is Clint?"

"B-."

"What do I need to bring for you?"

"Nuthin'. Take care of Clint."

He'd said some derivative of that already, multiple times. If she hadn't been sure he had a concussion before then, that and the confusion in his eyes confirmed it now.

"The longer I'm here asking, the longer it's going to take me to get back," she said, listening for Clint's raspy breaths over her shoulder. "Let me see your arm."

Steve scowled then pulled out his hand, which was horribly mangled, out of the front of his jacket. It was an awful shade of purple and was swollen to the point where the individual bones of his hand were invisible.

She could realign a few things, splint others, but a majority of that work was beyond her area of expertise.

"What happened?"

"Punched its nose. 'swhen I found out... it was metal."

"And your ankle?" The puddle of blood forming around Steve's feet hadn't escaped Margie's notice once she'd gotten Clint stitched up.

"Got bit. Shook it free. Bleeding... 'salready stopped."

There wasn't going to be much she could do for that either, assuming he was telling the truth. She took another look at his pant leg which was glistening wetly, but now noticed the puddle on the floor had a matte finish, meaning it was drying and that no new blood was leaking down.

Margie took a calculated breath then nodded. "I'll be back as soon as I can. Call me if anything changes."

* * *

As Margie suspected, there was no blood at Martin's office. She didn't allow herself to be disappointed, since it was a shot in the dark anyway, and focused on acquiring bandages, splints, wraps, and Martin's extra go-bag, which she knew would contain fluids, painkillers and tubing.

She was about halfway to her diner when Martin finally called her back.

"I just got your message—"

"Where the hell have you been?" Margie wouldn't help but seethe.

"Major wolf attacks in Finchberg." Margie bit back a groan, knowing Finchberg was over forty minutes away in the other direction.

"How is he?" Martin then asked.

"Not good. I stitched him up and just picked up fluids, pain killers, and glucose from your office. The ambulance from Waverly is on its way." She cocked her head to see her watch without lifting her hand from the steering wheel. "Thirty or so minutes out yet. What else can I do?"

Martin was silent for a moment then said, "I think that's about everything, Marge. Keep an eye on his breathing, keep him warm, and call me again if anything changes."

Margie promised she would then ended the call when Martin was interrupted on the other end of the line.

When she arrived back at the restaurant, Clint was an awful shade of gray and Steve was visibly struggling to stay awake. He turned as she entered but it took his eyes a moment to focus on her.

"D'you get it?" he slurred as he straightened up in the chair.

"Blood? No." Margie then dropped the bag on the table next to Clint and began unloading her supplies. "But I got all this." She set about finding veins and getting Clint hooked up to the fluids and painkillers, which she hung from the hat rack she'd fetched from the doorway.

When she looked back up, Steve was standing beside the go-bag, staring at a piece of tubing. "He needs blood," he stated as he turned from the waist to look expectantly at Margie.

She didn't catch his meaning until she looked down at the tubing he was holding and realized it was for a direct blood transfusion.

"You're the wrong type," she said, though greater objection died on her lips. Clint looked a lot worse than the last time she'd seen him and if he continued to decline, he wouldn't be alive by the time the ambulance got here.

"Serum," Steve said, shaking the tubing at her.

"Steve, I don't know." Even with the serum to mitigate some of the side-effects, he was the wrong type, which would cause some serious stress to Clint's already struggling system.

"Don't hava choice."

Deep down, Margie knew Steve was right. With the ambulance still twenty or so minutes away, it was unlikely Clint was going to last that long without some blood. Wrong type or not, this was his best chance.

"Move the table closer to the bar," she said. If Steve laid up there and held up his arm, that would allow the blood to travel downstream to Clint.

Steve nodded, set his jaw, and began to push.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: If you recognize parts of this chapter from **_**On Your Six**_**, it's because I thought I'd never post this fic, and was happy to reuse whatever I could. It should just really be the bit at the end that might ring some bells. Standard disclaimer still applies that I'm probably taking a few liberties with the medical- and legalese of it all. Hopefully it's somewhat feasible.**

**A/N 2: Steve's point of view is going to be a little jumpy and disjoint, given the severity of his injury. I promise it's not just bad editing. :)**

* * *

"How are you doing, Steve?" Margie asked fifteen minutes later. Steve was situated on the diner's counter, head on their only remaining clean towel and arm propped up by a stack of menus. Blood ran down the tube stuck into the crook of his arm into Clint's, who was still sprawled over the table that was now directly adjacent to the counter.

It had taken her and Steve some time to push the table over to the counter. With his one working hand, one uninjured ankle, and concussion, he was wobbling the table so badly Margie was worried Clint was going to get dumped. She had quickly assumed more of the load which had stabilized the trip considerably but had also slowed down their progress. Once Clint was situated, it took some work to get Steve up on the counter, even after she found a stepstool for him to use. But they'd managed, and once she'd had Steve scoot over slightly, she'd set about beginning the blood donation. There was a set of laminated instructions that she quickly reviewed first, but discovered she didn't need to; it hadn't changed much from back in the day.

Once the donation had been started, Margie had taken a stab at attending to Steve. She had sliced his pant leg up to his knee, revealing a bloody, oozing mass of flesh. True to his word though, it had stopped bleeding. Margie cleaned as much as she could then wrapped it in gauze. His hand was too swollen to get into the splint, so she fetched a bag of ice from the kitchen and gently wrapped it around his hand with an Ace bandage.

Now, Margie was keeping a careful eye on both of them, since the tubing didn't have any way of measuring how much blood was being taken from Steve. Steve looked okay—no grayer than normal—but if Margie wasn't mistaken—and she might be, given the exhaustion beginning to wear on her—there was a little more color in Clint's cheeks.

She had called Chet a little while ago to fill him in on the situation. His initial reaction hadn't been great but he'd quickly come around to the realization that this was truly their only option. She was following his advice by keeping Steve plied with sugary drinks and as much food as she could stuff down his throat to minimize a reaction.

She had just stood up to refill his juice a third time when she heard sirens in the distance. It was only then that the constant stream of prayers that had been running in the back of her head finally slowed.

Help was here.

After a second, Steve must have heard the sound too, for he perked up a little.

"Here?" he asked as he lifted his head from the table and stared unevenly out the large front window.

Margie nodded, but when she realized Steve hadn't looked at her, vocalized her answer.

"Good," Steve slurred. Then, his head dropped back to the counter too quickly for Margie's liking.

"Don't you go passing out now," she ordered as she hauled herself along the bar and jabbed her fingers into the underside of his neck. His pulse was a bit slower than it had been earlier, but still stronger and steadier than Clint's. A moment later, Steve's eyes flitted open again and made decently good contact with her own.

"Jus' restin'," he said, possibly apologetic. It was a little hard to tell for sure with the slur.

"Do me a favor and keep 'em open until the paramedics get here," Margie replied, to which Steve dipped his chin ever-so-slightly. He looked away from her but this time managed to keep his eyes open and focused on the ceiling.

"You're going to be alright, boy," Margie said, taking his hand in hers and squeezing slightly. Then she turned her attention to Clint, who seemed to be breathing at a more regular rate. "Both of you are."

She leaned in to confirm that Clint was in fact doing better, and by the time she'd looked up again, Steve's eyes were closed and his face slack.

"Steve?" she shouted, jabbing at the supersoldier's shoulder but received no response. She was about half a second away from slapping him when a paramedic hustled into the diner. He quickly took the situation, then began calling out orders to his crew, who were trailing in behind him pushing a stretcher.

"Can you tell me what happened?" the first paramedic asked as he began examining Clint. One of his colleagues stayed with him while the other attended to Steve.

Margie regurgitated the little Steve had told her, up to their decision to do a direct transfusion to save Clint's life. By the time she had finished, the direct transfusion line was gone and Steve and Clint were both hooked up to blood bags of their own. Steve had also been fitted with a cervical collar while Clint had picked up a lot of new monitoring equipment. The paramedics had tried to rouse both of them, with no success, even when they'd shone penlights into the Avengers' eyes.

"Move him first," the head paramedic then said, pointing to Steve.

The second paramedic, a blond woman, moved over to the counter, where she assisted in lowering Steve from the counter to the stretcher. The two strapped him in then disappeared out the door.

While they were gone, the head paramedic continued to monitor and try to wake Clint. He was simultaneously asking Margie questions, most of which she didn't know the answer to. The few she did know were only from information dropped during one of Clint's previous visits.

When his other paramedics returned, the three transferred Clint from the table to the stretcher using the vinyl tablecloth as support, then moved the IV bags from the hat rack to the pole sticking out of the top of the stretcher.

This time, Margie followed them out the door. "Plains General?" she asked as two of the paramedics began loading Clint's stretcher into the ambulance. She stayed out of their way but shifted enough to see Steve strapped to a bench seat jutting out of the right side of the ambulance, being attended by the blond woman.

"Yes, ma'am," the first paramedic said.

She waited until they'd secured the stretcher and were just about to close the doors to say, "Take care of them." It felt unnecessary, considering that was what the paramedics were here to do, but she felt better for saying it all the same.

Thankfully, none of them seemed offended, or they were too preoccupied to care.

"Don't worry, ma'am," the driver said, before closing the door behind his teammates. "We'll do our best."

* * *

"Sir, an ambulance has arrived in Waverly Falls."

"I assume it's for our dysfunctional duo?" Tony asked, snapping upright in his chair and rubbing the last vestiges of sleep from his eyes. He hadn't realized he'd been drifting off until JARVIS had spoken. Natasha was in a similar state on the other side of the quinjet, but was now pushing herself to her feet.

JARVIS responded by playing a 911 call from an elderly woman, who he then identified as Margaret Wilkinson, owner of Granny's Diner in Waverly Falls.

Tony cut a glance at Natasha, who dropped into a chair in front of the wall of monitors and began typing furiously. Footage of any sort was scarce at best in Waverly Falls, but not long into the flight, Natasha (with JARVIS' help) had traced down a camera on a delivery truck that showed Clint and Steve being herded into the diner yesterday afternoon by an elderly woman, presumable Margaret. Unfortunately, there had been no other video of them either before or after. Now, Tony could only assume Natasha was trying to hack a feed from either the paramedics or the ambulance itself.

"What hospital?"

"Plains General," JARVIS said and Tony felt the slight shift of the quinjet as it adjusted course.

While Natasha worked in the background, Tony pulled out his phone and started calling ahead to make arrangements for his teammates.

* * *

An indeterminate amount of time later, a fully-conscious Steve was lying in an exam room at Plains General, pretending to be asleep. His arm had been casted from his elbow through his distal knuckles, his ankle had been stitched and strapped into an air cast until the swelling died down, and his wound on his head had been cleaned and closed with steri-strips. He was receiving both blood and fluids intravenously, neither of which was doing much more than causing the puncture points in his arms to itch.

The nurse had just been by to check on him and declared him healing. She hadn't had any information on Clint, which was unacceptable.

Once she was out the door, Steve began pulling electrodes from his chest and head. The machines began to blare but they slipped back into silence a beat later. Confused, Steve looked over to find a dark-haired blob standing by the monitors. His nurse was a redhead, so Steve was about to swing on instinct. Then the blob shifted into a recognizable shape.

"Tony?" Steve slurred blearily.

"Geez, that thing really did a number on you," the spiky-haired genius said, gently lowering Steve's fist to the bed. "Remind me to never let you and Barton go gallivanting around the Midwest alone again."

"Clint?"

"Natasha is checking on him."

"There are no—" the voice was sharp and feminine and Steve jerked his head toward the door, only to wince at his skull protested the quick movement. His vision blurred but he was able to hear a scuffle happening off to his left.

"Sir, you can't be in here," the voice continued and this time Steve recognized it as his nurse, whose name he hadn't been able to read or remember. "And you _definitely _shouldn't be hooked up to that."

Steve blinked lethargically at the scene to his left and followed the wires from the machines to Tony's chest.

"I was trying to not get you in trouble," Tony hissed at Steve, before turning back to the nurse and smiling widely. "It's not what it looks like," he tried but it was too late. Nurse was pulling things off Tony's chest and slapping her hand down on the machine to truly silence it.

When he was free of the electrodes, Nurse tried to grab Tony's arm but he sidestepped. "I think I can," he said, disappearing from Steve's field of vision. "Tell her, Cap."

_Tell her what?_

"Captain Rogers is not up for visitors," Nurse said shortly, pointing at the door.

_Oh_.

"He ca' st'y."

Nurse looked over. "Are you sure, Captain?"

Steve nodded, then winced as that simple motion drove a thick nail through his skull. He closed his eyes against the pain and waited for the onslaught to let up.

"Which reminds me, I come bearing gifts." He heard a jingle then a sharp slapping sound. He forced his eyes open to see Nurse grabbing Tony's outstretched wrist. In his hand rested a syringe, filled with a liquid Steve recognized.

"I am not letting you inject Captain Rogers with that," Nurse snapped.

"It's a painkiller, designed for him," Tony countered, motioning at Steve with his free hand. Though Steve knew he could, Tony didn't break the woman's hold.

Nurse still looked unsure.

"'sokay," Steve said. "Trust him."

There was a beat of silence before Tony spoke again. "You probably shouldn't. Loki, Skrulls, all that."

Steve shook his head very minutely. "You're not."

Something flashed over Tony's face, which Steve didn't fully understand. By the time his brain could focus on it fully, it was gone.

Nurse still looked uncertain—that much was easy for him to tell, even with his pounding brain—but she released Tony's wrist. "I'll administer it after he signs forms releasing the hospital from any liability," she said warily.

"I hardly think he can hold a pen," Tony pointed out.

Nurse looked like she was going to agree but then Tony continued. "No forms needed. I have this." Tony looked up at the camera in the corner of Steve's room and said loudly, "I, Tony Stark, genius, philanthropist, billionaire, and second-in-command of the Avengers, release Plains General and all its related entities from any incident that might come from injecting Steve Rogers, or Captain America, with the formula we specifically designed to reduce his pain."

He looked over at Steve and pointed at the camera. "Say you agree."

"Agree," Steve slurred out and tried his best to smile too. From Tony's appalled expression, he wasn't entirely successful.

"JARVIS, cut that and mail to both my lawyers and the hospital's."

"Yes, sir," the AI said. Steve wasn't sure from where.

"That good enough?" Tony then asked Nurse.

She nodded, then held out her hand for the syringe, which Tony happily handed over.

He then slung the circular brown bag Steve just realized he was wearing on his back over his shoulder. "I have something else for you," he then said, unzipping the top portion and showing Steve a glint of shiny red. "Just in case you need it."

Nurse took one look then pointedly turned back to her patient. "I'm not going to ask."

Tony quickly placed the bag at the foot of the bed and threw up his hands. "Leaving now, Nurse Elyse. Cap, let me know if you need anything. I'll send Natasha when she's done with Barton."

It was only once Tony had left the room that Elyse lifted the syringe to the IV port. "Please don't let me get fired for this," she whispered so softly, Steve only barely heard her over the pounding in his head.

"You won't," Steve slurred as his painkillers rushed through his IV and his grip on the world began to fade away.

Elyse was asking him something but it was gibberish to his ears. Unable to open his mouth, he drifted peacefully into unconsciousness.

* * *

"How is he?" Tony asked Natasha. She actually jumped which made it the first time in their history that Tony had surprised her. Given that her best friend was on the other side of the observation window surrounded by a team of white coats, he found it within himself to let it go.

"They're… confused," she said, the tense edge dropping off of her shoulders. "I think it's Steve's blood." She didn't wait for him to pose a follow-up before continuing, "Clint's reacting to the different factors, but his healing is far greater than anticipated."

"So he's going to be fine?"

"Not yet, but they're hopeful." Natasha tore her eyes away from the window and asked, "How is Steve?"

"Drugged up and out. I'd say another two hours before he needs a new dose."

Natasha nodded then turned back to the window as alarms began beeping.

"He's waking up," someone stated. Then one of the white coats pushed the others out of the way and a moment later, the alarms began to die down.

"I don't understand," the same white coat said.

Tony took this opportunity to rap softly on the glass while using his other hand to push on the comm system. "It's the supersoldier serum," he said, hearing his voice echo on the other side of the glass. "Faster metabolism, cell regeneration. His body is burning through the analgesics and anesthetic like Steve's."

"I can't legally give him anymore," one of the white coats replied. "He's maxed out."

Natasha leaned over and pushed Tony's hand out of the way. "I, Natalia Romanova, am his medial Power of Attorney," she said into the comm. Tony was briefly taken aback by this declaration but then realized he shouldn't have been; it was practically inevitable given their line of work and how close the two superspies were.

"Listen to Tony," Natasha continued. "He's one of the few who really understands how the serum works." She then looked over at him and gestured for him to continue.

"An extra twenty percent an hour should do it," Tony said, leaning back toward the covered microphone. Steve's specially-designed formula upped the potency to an extra fifty percent, but Tony reduced it for Clint since they didn't know exactly how much of the serum was coursing through his veins.

"It's on tape," Natasha said, pointing to the cameras, "which makes it legally binding. So hurry up and do it." The machines were screeching louder now and the white coats operating around Clint's abdomen were hunched over in deep, muffled discussion.

"I already made a statement on camera in your lawyer's emails," Tony added. "It applies to this situation too."

The doctor nodded, which set a white coat on the edge of the room into motion. He was doing something Tony didn't fully understand but was hoping meant Clint was going to get more sedative. The monitors were still beeping loudly and quickly though, which meant it hadn't yet happened.

At that same moment, the phone in the operating room rang and a different white coat peeled away to answer. She nodded after a moment then hung up, to which the surgeon responded by signaling… someone.

A beat later, Clint's monitors normalized and remained that way through the rest of his surgery. Tony and Natasha watched, stone-faced and silent, until Clint was rolled into post-op. At that point, Natasha volunteered to check on Steve while Tony charmed his way into waiting in post-op next to Clint. If he cited a non-existent Avengers' emergency to do so, no one else had to know.

And that's where he remained, in an uncomfortable plastic chair next to his teammate, listening for even the slightest changes in breathing or monitoring, until his phone chimed with an alert from JARVIS. The animatronic wolves, presumably the ones that had attacked Steve and Clint, which was information he'd gleaned from calling Margaret after the ambulance had left her diner, were running rampant through Waverly Falls again.

Tony forwarded the message to Natasha's phone, then stood up, interlaced his fingers above his head, and stretched out his very stiff back. As much as he didn't want to leave his healing teammates, he and Natasha had work to do.

* * *

**Steve giving blood to one of his teammates is a scenario I've been wanting to write for years. I'm glad it finally gets to see the light of day in one of my stories.**

**Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you thought!**


	5. Chapter 5

Everything would have been fine if Natasha would have answered her damn phone. Today, though, for whatever reason, she hadn't, which meant Tony had to fill her in on the situation, while in Steve's room, in front of a semi-alert Steve.

She was on her feet in an instant, ready to go; it was the half-conscious idiot trying to pull the leads off his chest and follow that was the problem.

"'m'goin' w'th," Steve slurred as he continued to struggle with the electrodes.

Before Tony could move, Natasha dropped her hand over Steve's and gently pinned it to his chest. "You're staying here," she said.

Steve frowned up at her. "'m'goin'."

"What would you say if I was the one in the hospital bed with a broken ankle, broken hand and a moderate concussion?"

Steve mumbled something so soft, Tony didn't hear it. He suspected Natasha did since she told Steve to repeat it, louder.

"I'd m'ke you stay," he ground out unhappily.

"That's right. So you _will_ stay here, where we know you're safe and out of harm's way. I will make sure you have a comm but you are not to leave this bed, under any normal, everyday circumstance." She dropped her head slightly so she could stare Steve straight in the eye. "Do I make myself clear?"

If this entire situation hadn't been so grave, Tony would have found it rather fascinating to watch this entire conversation unfold. He had never seen Natasha openly defy Steve like this. On top of that, she had flat-out ordered him to do something the rest of them didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting him to do. Yet, incredibly, Steve was nodding, despite the scowl etched into his face.

"Good." Natasha's expression then softened as she leaned over Steve's bed and whispered something into his ear while fitting him with her comm.

Despite what everyone else thought, Tony knew when to give people space and looked down at his phone to check for any updates from JARVIS. It was barely a second's glance but when he'd looked up again, Natasha was gone and Steve was staring, forlorn, at the door.

That was too much for him to deal with today.

"Be back in a jiff. Listen to the nurses. Stay in bed," Tony said as he scrambled to follow Natasha, hoping that Steve would listen to him the same way he had Natasha.

"'e careful," he heard as he stepped into the hallway.

At Steve's tone, Tony couldn't help but turn and tap the comm in his own ear. "You know we will. Besides, we'll have you listening in the whole time."

Steve smiled slightly at that but it didn't reach his eyes. Unsure of what to say next, Tony just left.

He found Natasha waiting by the elevator and had to sprint to slide between the doors before they closed.

"That was… harsh," he panted, while leaning against the back wall and trying to catch his breath.

Natasha shrugged, though her cavalier attitude was belied by her concerned expression. "He knows he's a liability if he goes. The more I'm worried about him, the less I'm paying attention to me. He won't take that chance."

Turning it around like that, with the focus on the rest of the team and not Steve's own inabilities was… callous… and clever. But she was right. The last thing Steve needed was to get himself or someone else hurt because he couldn't do his job in his current condition. Tony doubted that particular turn of phrase would work again, but he noted it, just in case.

* * *

It was supposed to be a twenty-two minute flight to Waverly Falls but Natasha made it in eighteen.

"Where are they?" she asked as she dropped the quinjet closer to the ground and took another pass down Waverly Fall's main street. All the businesses were closed for the day and there was very little light shining on the street. Even so, it was extremely obvious there was no visible movement, animatronic or other.

"They were just here," Tony said as he returned to typing furiously on his phone. In between holding on for dear life and trying not to throw up as Natasha maneuvered the quinjet at G-force level speeds, he had hacked into the single traffic camera at the single intersection on Main Street and had seen a pack of wolves, six or seven in number, sprinting through not five minutes before. "They can't have gone far. Factoring in their relative speed and topography, they can't be more than three-fourths of a mile out."

Natasha began flying in increasingly larger circles radiating from the camera while the equipment panel continued to scan for signs of motion.

"There!" Tony shouted, pointing out the window as a swiftly moving metal blur. "Let's follow it to—"

"That will be too obvious," Natasha countered. "Take the controls."

"What?"

By the time Tony had realized Natasha was no longer sitting in the pilot's seat, she had disappeared in the back of the quinjet. He dropped his phone as he lunged forward, caught the quinjet's yolk, and struggled to keep it level. "A little warning would have been nice!" he snapped as he slipped into the pilot's seat while somehow maintaining altitude.

For a long minutes, ambient rustling sounds emitted from the back of the plane. Then Natasha came up beside him, carrying a long grey gun. "You catch up with the pack, I'll tag one of them."

"And just how do you plan on doing that?"

Natasha grinned. "Keep her steady," was all she said before she again disappeared out of Tony's sight. As he increased the speed in order to close the distance to the running pack, the quinjet's console flashed with a notification that the back ramp had opened.

"You're not really—" was all Tony managed before the wind racing out of the quinjet stole the rest of his words.

Something flashed below his window before the ramp juddered closed.

"Get him?" Tony asked as Natasha slid into the makeshift seat just behind him.

She didn't answer, so Tony risked a glance left to see her staring at him, clearly unamused.

"Just asking," he muttered. "So now what?"

"Pull up so we aren't spotted and we'll see where they go."

"Then what?"

Tony didn't have to look over at Natasha to know she was grinning ferally. "We rain down hell."

* * *

The wolves led them to what was supposed to be an abandoned dairy farm about twenty miles outside of Waverly Falls. Tony and Natasha couldn't risk the quinjet getting too close, but even from that distance, the onboard tech was able to scan the farm and locate at least twenty heat signatures.

"Blueprints?" Natasha asked.

Tony scoffed as his fingers continued flying over the holographic keyboard projecting from his phone. As soon as the quinjet had stabilized, he had started hacking the Iowa Department of Records, and was currently searching through their results. "Already on it," he said. "Nothing yet."

He felt her put the quinjet on auto-pilot then stand behind his shoulder. Normally, he'd mind the close promixity a great bit, but today was a different sort of circumstance.

A few minutes later, he found the blueprints of the dairy farm. He and Natasha compared them to the heat signatures and began hatching a plan. After the main pieces had been sorted, Natasha phoned the intel into SHIELD and was instructed by Sitwell to wait.

"Copy that," she said before ending the call and turning to Tony. "You ready?"

He threw out his arms and the armor assembled around him. "Let's do this."

* * *

It was only after the Tony and Natasha raided and secured the base, using an EMP Tony had cobbled together from spare parts in the quinjet to short out the animatronic wolves, and SHIELD had arrived for clean-up, that the picture began to unfold. The dairy farm was being operated by a small group of AIM operatives, who had released the wolves in order to scare people away from the area, in order to expand their operation. Apparently they could only do so much evil with decent civilians in a twenty-mile radius.

One might ask why they didn't build their base elsewhere, but Tony wasn't keen on listening to whatever drivel the AIM members were spouting. He turned his attention to the wolves, which he began systematically and permanently disabling by pulling a few key wires in their necks. At the risk of his jerry-rigged EMP wearing off, he'd been forced to coerce a few SHIELD agents in helping. He would have preferred Natasha, but she was dealing with the AIM agents, and he was not about to switch jobs. So far, the decomm process was going well, but the tides turned when Sitwell arrived.

Sitwell was initially livid that they didn't wait for reinforcements but his anger died down as he saw the wolves. Tony had pretty much tuned his rant out until Sitwell started asking the techs questions that were a little... strange. At that point, considering Tony trusted most SHIELD agents—but Sitwell especially—about as far as he could throw them, Tony quickly finished disabling the last wolf then set about very loudly ordering the agents to send all eleven wolves directly to Coulson. Yes, Coulson was still _technically_ a suit who reported to Fury but he was a suit who had come through for Tony time and time again.

Sitwell was less than impressed by this turn of events but nodded and said it would be done. Not fully convinced, Tony had JARVIS monitor the packing process while simultaneously informing Coulson that said wolves were en route and would be needing safe storage.

After the operatives were led away and the wolves boxed up for transport, Natasha and Tony returned to the hospital to some surprising news: Clint, who should have been out for the rest of the night, was awake.

Natasha immediately strode toward his room, only pausing after a few steps to ask if Tony didn't mind checking on Steve first. Obviously he didn't and motioned for her to go.

"Clint's awake," he announced as he walked into Steve's room.

It was only when Steve was looking at him with a surprising amount of clarity that Tony realized he'd forgotten Steve had a comm in his ear.

"Ca' I see 'im?"

"Probably not." Tony had meant it glibly, because _of course_ they were going to see Clint, despite what the hospital staff advised. Steve however must have taken him seriously, for his face fell. "But then again, when have I ever stood on principal," Tony quickly amended. He slipped around to the back of Steve's bed and began investigating how to get the whole thing moving. It took him only a moment to figure it out—genius, remember?—and push Steve out of the room.

"Mr. Stark," Luca, the wing nurse, shouted behind them. He quickly sprinted past Tony and planted himself in front of the foot of Steve's bed. "I know you are rich and famous but we can't stand for this behavior."

"Clint Barton, our lovable Hawkeye, is awake and Steve wants to see him." Tony shifted his grip and tried to push Steve past Luca but the nurse quickly readjusted his stance so he blocked them once again.

"That may be, but Captain Rogers is not cleared to leave this floor."

"Then you better some with us," Tony said as he tried to push Steve the other way.

This time, Luca grabbed the foot rail of Steve's bed to hold it, and Tony, in place. "Mr. Stark, please."

"Ca' I jus' see 'im?" Steve slurred. "'ll 'ome 'ight back."

Tony looked up at Luca, as if waiting for him to say no to Captain America. The nurse was visibly conflicted but a long moment later, he nodded. "Five minutes." He kept his hand on Steve's bed the entire time he walked back to where Tony was standing. "And I will push him."

Tony was all too happy to hand over control of the bed. "Suit yourself."

* * *

"I can't believe this," Natasha said, looking up from Clint's side. Underneath the gauze and stitches, his wounds had closed, but only just, based on their shade of bright pink. It was a level of healing she expected to see a week or so out and had until now, had only seen so quickly with Steve.

"At this rate, we should be able to take the stitches out tomorrow," Molly, the ICU nurse, said before taping the gauze back down.

"'s good," Clint slurred. He was still a little hazy but was overall holding a conversation much better than even Natasha expected.

She waited a moment for him to comment something about having the superpowers he always wanted but he just stared somewhat unsteadily at her. When he didn't say anything even after a minute, Natasha just reached out and rubbed a soothing path up his arm. As much as she wanted to see him acknowledge his current situation, she would have been more surprised if Clint had completely remembered what had happened and knew that he currently had the serum flowing through his veins. The serum could do a lot, but even it had its limits in such a short time frame.

The fact Clint had some supersoldier serum running through his veins wasn't something they were trying to hide though. As Clint regained his awareness, he'd notice the abundance of staff checking in, trying to head off any reaction to the different blood type, and the excess monitoring equipment he was connected to. So far, the only symptom out of the ordinary was that Clint was running a slight fever. Panels had been run and a hematologist had been consulted with the end result of attributing said fever to Clint's body fighting the unfamiliar blood cells, and not an infection in his wounds. Natasha knew what damage a foreign blood type could cause, so the fact that the reaction seemed to be minimized to just a fever meant the serum was protecting Clint from that too.

At some point, Natasha had asked point blank if the serum was permanent but the various staff had shaken their heads. Clint's body wasn't manufacturing the serum, so once his blood cells had attacked all of Steve's, he'd be back to his normal healing abilities. Again, they weren't keeping that a secret, but Natasha doubted Clint had fully absorbed what that meant in his current condition.

Clint's gaze lolled over to her, but before he could say anything, his gaze refocused on something behind her. As she was turning to look, Natasha recognized Tony's distinctive footfalls approaching in the hallway, ahead of something rolling that could only be a hospital bed.

"H'y," Clint said with a wide grin as Tony stepped into the room, then hustled off to the side to leave room for Luca and Steve. Clint stared at Steve for a moment, his brow furrowing in confusion. "Wha'ppened to you?"

"Same 'ing… tha' happen'd to you," Steve replied.

Clint still looked rather confused, but he nodded. "Huh." His eyes slipped out of focus for a moment and he had to blink hard to hone them in on the same space again. "Don' 'member."

"That's okay," Natasha was quick to say as she ran her hand up Clint's arm and lightly squeezed his shoulder. "We'll tell you everything later."

He nodded absently again but this time, his eyes didn't leave Steve.

"Later," Natasha promised, which succeeded in relaxing the tension in Clint's posture.

"How're y'u feelin'?" Steve then asked, sitting slightly upright in his bed. He clearly wanted to go further but Luca clucked disapprovingly at him and instead raised the head of the bed for Steve to rest against.

"Floaty. But otherwise oooookay," Clint drawled, throwing up the hand signal for good measure. He blinked at the lot of them then announced, "I think 'm going back to sleep."

"That's okay." With that, Natasha grabbed the remote and eased his bed back down to flat. "We'll see you soon."

"Uh huh." Clint nodded his head a few times, losing speed with each one. It was only another moment before his eyes closed.

"Now you've seen him, Captain," Luca said before kicking off the brakes on Steve's bed. "Let's get you back to your room."

Tony reached out and grabbed the foot rail of Steve's bed, keeping the three of them in Clint's room. "You know what? It'd really be a lot easier—for everyone, not just me—if you just let them stay in the same room."

Luca looked up in exasperation. "Mr. Stark, they're two completely different levels of care. I—"

"What number?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Leave Steve here and ask your supervisor what number it will take to get the two of them here together. I'll have my office send over a check."

"Mr. Stark, please—"

Natasha appreciated the situation this put Luca in, but for once, she was in full agreement with Tony's opulent display of his wealth. The hospital clearly needed the money and she would really appreciate not having to bounce back and forth between floors to keep an eye on her teammates. Plus, if the two Avengers were less of a threat in their current condition, and if that information got out, it could make them targets from their many enemies. They would be easier to protect in the same space. "Please don't make him ask again," she said, letting her own exhaustion seep into her tone for just a moment.

Luca looked back and forth between the two of them, sighed then said, "Yes, ma'am." He pushed a semi-flagging Steve into the space next to Clint, made a few other checks, then left the room.

"What are we going to do with the two of them?" Natasha asked once Luca was gone. Steve might have slurred out a protest but it was too soft for either of them to hear. When they both looked over, his eyes were closed and his breathing had levelled out.

"I take it you don't mean lock them in the Tower for the rest of their lives?" Tony then asked.

"No, I mean now. You know how they both are." Madly pretending they weren't in fact still hurt, overexerting themselves, and ending up back in the medbay they'd tried to so desperately avoid. "They're going to need looking after, and I'm not sure Clint's up to a flight."

"I guess that's where I come in."

Tony whirled around at the unfamiliar voice to find an elderly woman standing in the doorway, an absolutely massive purse looped over one arm.

"And you are?" Tony demanded. It only after he'd spoken that he started to put the details together.

"Margie Wilkinson. We spoke on the phone. I run the diner in Waverly Falls." She walked quickly into the room, nodded at Tony, dropped her bag on the chair and held her arms out wide. "You've lost weight, Natasha. Are they not feeding _any_ of you in DC?"

Whatever Tony was expecting, it was not Natasha stepping forward and allowing herself to be wrapped in Margie's arms. "I've missed you, Gran," she said into the elderly woman's shoulder.

Tony was too shocked at the Widow's open show of affection to comment, and by the time he'd picked his jaw up off the floor, Margie was leaning over Steve's bed.

"He looks a lot better than the last time I saw him," she said, brushing her hand along the side of his face. Then she turned to Clint and carefully looked him over as well. "Him too. I guess Steve's superblood is really doing the trick."

"His side looks a week healed already," Natasha said as she picked up a third chair from the far side of the room and brought it over next to Margie, who was sitting in the chair previously occupied by her purse and was now digging through it.

"Is the roast beef still your favorite?" she said, apropos of nothing. "I threw in some others just in case."

"I don't understand," Tony finally managed, his gaze dancing between the two of them.

"Clinton knows to bring all his guests by the diner," Margie said, as if that explained everything. "Now, Mr. Stark, would you like turkey or ham?"

"Ham," Natasha answered for him. Tony barely managed to get his hands up to catch the plastic-wrapped sandwich gently lobbed toward him.

"I'm not—"

"Just eat it," Natasha said, unwrapping a sandwich of her own and digging in.

Not one for being told what to do, Tony wanted to protest, but a small part of him recognized the logic in her words. He scowled to show his disapproval but then dropped into the third chair and did as she ordered. He was genuinely surprised by both how good the simple sandwich was and how his stomach immediately started growling, reminding him how long it had been since he'd eaten last. He heard a gentle chuckle before another ham sandwich landed in his lap.

"You should stay in town for a few days," Margie said as Natasha and Tony feasted. "Until Clinton gets his strength back. I can go back and get his place ready for more guests."

While Margie began laying out the logistics of acquiring more food and having Dr. Martin close by in case something changed, Tony considered her suggestion. He had meetings on meetings that he was supposed to be in New York for, but he _could _call into those remotely. Besides, he had a lot of information to pry out of this woman who called Clint by his given name and lived to tell the tale. She apparently had history with Natasha, who had outwardly called her Gran. Suffice it to say, this was too good of an opportunity for him to pass on. And if he had to find a non-selfish reason for staying, there was something to be said for Clint and Steve recovering in a place that made it physically impossible for them to jump back into work too quickly.

"Sold," Tony said while Natasha nodded her agreement. "We'd appreciate your help." He pulled out his wallet but Margie just shook her head.

"Not after all you all do for us."

Margie then picked her purse up from the floor, walked over to Clint's bed and grabbed his hand. She stood there for a long moment before lowering it back to the bed. "I'll have it ready by tomorrow," she said. "Let me know if there are any changes?"

"Absolutely."

"Godspeed to the both of you," Margie said to Steve and Clint's sleeping figures before she turned and left the room.

* * *

Two days later, Clint and Steve were released from the hospital. Though Clint had slept most of his stay, his body clearly taxed by the requirements of the serum, the claw marks in his side were now fully closed and the skin was no longer a brilliant pink. He was clearly no longer in danger of dying and was tired of the barrage of doctors, nurses and other hospital staff that seemed to only be interested in the serum.

Steve was healing too, but at his usual rate, which meant he'd probably be out of his dual sets of casts by the end of the week... if he took it easy. Which he probably wouldn't, unless one of the other Avengers essentially sat on him for seven days. His concussion, though healing, was still severe enough to keep him from operating heavy machinery, and with no danger in sight, even Steve wouldn't risk running on a broken leg. For once, Natasha and Tony were cautiously optimistic they'd be able to keep their injured teammates out of trouble until they'd recovered.

Later that night, the four Avengers and Margie were fanned out around the grill inside Clint's netted porch, shoveling down the s'mores Gran was dishing out.

Clint was in the chair closest to the grill, his skewer lashed to his cup holder so he didn't have to expend the effort to hold it—not that he couldn't have if he'd needed to, but Gran was assembling multi-layer s'mores that required two hands to control. Steve was sitting on the far side of the grill, his broken leg propped up by the chair's expanding footrest. He was having more difficulty with keeping the gooey s'more off his cast but was managing by tilting his head and letting gravity do most of the work. Tony was to Steve's right, directly across from Clint, and was spending more time staring around the property and the sky than actually consuming any food. Natasha was just off to Clint's left, practically inhaling both the dinner Gran had brought from her diner and the s'mores she was distributing now.

"I can't believe you own a farm," Tony said for the umpteenth time, turning back to look at Clint.

"Technically, William Brandt owns it," Clint said around a mouthful of oozing marshmallow.

"You are William Brandt."

Clint shrugged off the semantics then swallowed the rest of his s'more and held out his plate to Gran, who was tending to the array of skewers like a professional.

"That's your last one," Margie said. She assembled a s'more and slid it onto Clint's plate, all the while ignoring Clint's overly-dramatic groan. "You're lucky we let you have as many as you did with that hole in your stomach."

"But Gran..."

"If you keep these down tonight, we can have more tomorrow."

Clint grinned then set to work on the two-layer sandwich.

It was only as the fire was dying down and Tony was grilling Gran about how she first met Clint and Natasha, that Clint rolled his head over to Steve. "You awake?"

The supersoldier, who had been leaning back in his own chair, cracked open one eye. "Yup. What's up?"

"Thank you," Clint said. He'd been meaning to say it before but hadn't ever found a moment when the two of them were alone. Technically, they still weren't, but with everyone else distracted, it was as close as they were going to get. "For everything." He only remembered fragments of the immediate aftermath: staring at his ceiling, being bustled around, Margie, then blackness, but somehow he knew Steve had been by his side the entire time.

Clint cleared his throat then added, "But especially for giving me your blood. Gran said how close it was, and I appreciate you taking the chance."

Yesterday afternoon, Natasha had told him the serum wasn't permanent, which Clint had suspected, and that it was likely to wear off fully in the next day or so. Clint was definitely disappointed, but it was tempered slightly by the fact that, for the past day, he'd had the chance to experience a few awesome side effects: his senses were sharper than normal and he felt a strange sense of power coursing through his limbs. If he'd been stronger, he definitely would put his temporarily-enhanced body through the paces and seen how close to Steve's prowess he could get. As it was though, he could just amaze everyone by spotting things on the far side of his property with incredible accuracy and having no issues keeping the dripping dessert off his clothes.

"I'd say anytime," Steve said, drawing Clint back to the present, "but I'd really like to not have to do that again."

Clint laughed, which turned into a coughing fit as he choked on a fragment of graham cracker that must have been stuck between his teeth.

A bony hand was on his back a minute later and a glass of water at his lips. When he could breathe again, Clint looked up to see four incredibly concerned faces peering over at him.

"Duly noted," he wheezed in Steve's direction before saying, "I'm fine," to everyone else.

The others seemed less than convinced, but after a minute, the previous conversation between Tony, Gran and Natasha resumed.

Clint took another pull of water and turned back to Steve. "I guess our weekend was ruined."

"Not all of it," Steve shrugged, tearing his eyes away from the sky to find Clint's. "We got to go fishing, and eat amazing lasagna and take down an AIM base."

"Still. Didn't quite get all the R&R I was hoping for."

Steve rolled his head toward Clint and grinned. "In three weeks, we both have a weekend off. I'm sure I can talk Janet into giving us that Monday off too." The 'if you want to come back here' was unspoken, along with the 'if you'll have me.'

"No!" Tony and Natasha shouted in unison, so loudly that Clint actually felt himself recoil slightly. He recovered quickly and stuck out his tongue, not caring that he was being childish.

"You're no fun."

He then looked over at Steve who just winked before closing his eyes and resting his head against the pillow.

Not wanting to give their plan away, Clint imagined himself doing a fist pump, before he leaned back in his chair as well, and fell asleep to the sound of the most important people in his life getting along.

* * *

**And that's the end of _Weekend at Barton's_! Thanks for all your support throughout this story. It means the world to me!**

**I have a Tumblr, usaOneTwoThree, if you want to follow the progress of my next fic, which throws canon into the wind so I can have Steve, Tony, Sam, Bucky and JARVIS all in a fic together. I have 18k words written and it should need about double that before it's ready to go. If all goes well, it should be posted early next year.**

**Thanks again for reading! I'd love to know what you thought on your way out!**

**usa123**


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